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The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will scrap most assistance for coal-fired power plants, joining the World Bank and the U.S. in a retreat from supporting the most polluting fossil fuel.

The lender’s board voted today on a new investment strategy that includes the policy on coal financing, the London-based EBRD said. Funding of power plants that burn the fuel will now go ahead only in “rare and exceptional circumstances,” said Head of Energy and Natural Resources Riccardo Puliti.

Treasury secretary Jack Lew declared victory against “too big to fail” banks and said the US would focus on holding the rest of the world to that higher standard.

“I said if we could not with a straight face say we ended ‘too big to fail’, we would have to look at other options,” he said. “Based on the totality of reforms we are putting in place, I believe we will meet that test. But to be clear, there is no precise point at which you can prove with certainty that we have done enough. If, in the future, we need to take further action, we will not hesitate.”

The European Commission has fined a group of major global banks a total of 1.7 billion euros ($2.3 billion) for colluding to profit from the manipulation of key interest rates.

The banks, which include JP Morgan, Citigroup and HSBC, are accused of manipulating for years European and Japanese benchmark interest rates that affect hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts globally, from mortgages to credit card bills.

Trade Minister Anand Sharma said on Friday he will not compromise on food subsidies for the poor at a WTO meeting next week, but left open the possibility of an interim subsidy deal designed to salvage a trillion-dollar trade pact.

India is seen holding the key to the credibility of the World Trade Organization talks and to a global trade deal at the meeting in Bali next week.

India will next year fully implement a welfare programme to give cheap food to 800 million people that it fears will contravene WTO rules that limit farm subsidies to 10 percent of production.

The African Development Bank on November 26, 2013 launched the 12th Edition of the African Economic Outlook in Khartoum, Sudan.

Economies around the world are adopting a range of policies as they strive to strike a balance between raising tax revenues and encouraging growth, according to a new report from the World Bank Group and PwC. This year, 14 economies significantly increased their total tax obligations or the amount of tax a case study company has to pay, while 14 others lowered theirs. In most regions around the world, the rate of decline in the total amount the firm has to pay in taxes continues to slow.

Federal Reserve officials still expect to start pulling back on the central bank's $85 billion-per-month bond-buying program "in coming months," but they engaged in a wide-ranging conversation at their October meeting about ways to reinforce their plans to keep short-term interest rates low for a long time after the program ends.

With impending elections, India might buckle under pressure from the farmers and civil society groups who have warned negotiators of any kind of a trade off on the controversial ‘Peace Clause’ under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) food security agreement. Further, this will not guarantee any protection to India from getting dragged into trade disputes by developed countries.

Climate campaigners reserve a special scorn for coal-fired power generation. Coal has replaced nuclear as the form of energy that environmentalists most love to hate.

"The world needs to turn its back on the fossil fuels of the past, like coal, which have helped to create today's climate and instead look to the clean, renewable energy sources of the future," the UK charity Christian Aid said on Monday.

"If we are to avoid dangerous climate change we must leave most of the remaining coal reserves in the ground," the charity warned.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) provided almost US $27 billion worldwide, in financing to address the challenges of climate change in 2012, according to the second joint MDB report on climate finance. The report was released today, in line with the commitment by MDBs to enhance the transparency of their investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation.